Posts Tagged ‘directed self assembly’

The annual SPIE Advanced Lithography symposium in San Jose, Calif., hasn’t offered a clear winner in the next-generation lithography race. It’s becoming clearer, however, that 193i immersion and extreme-ultraviolet lithography will co-exist in the future, while directed self-assembly, nanoimprint lithography, and maybe even electron-beam direct-write technology will fit into the picture, too.

At the same time, plasma deposition and etching processes are assuming a greater interdependence with 193i, especially when it comes to multiple patterning, such as self-aligned double patterning, self-aligned quadruple patterning, and self-aligned octuple patterning (yes, there is such a thing!).

“We’ve got to go down to the sub-nanometer level,” Richard Gottscho, Lam Research’s executive vice president of global products, said Monday morning in his plenary presentation at the conference. “We must reduce the variability in multiple patterning,” he added.

Gottscho touted the benefits of atomic level processing in continuing to shrink IC dimensions. Atomic level deposition has been in volume production for a decade or more, he noted, and atomic level etching is emerging as an increasingly useful technology.

When it comes to EUV, “it’s a matter of when, not if,” the Lam executive commented. “EUV will be complementary with 193i.”

Anthony Yen, director of nanopatterning technology in the Infrastructure Division of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, followed Gottscho in the plenary session. “The fat lady hasn’t sung yet, but she’s on the stage,” he said of EUV.

Harry Levinson, senior director of GlobalFoundries, gave the opening plenary presentation, with the topic of “Evolution in the Concentration of Activities in Lithography.” He was asked after his presentation, “When is the end?” Levinson replied, “We’re definitely not going to get sub-atomic.”

With that limit in mind, dozens of papers were presented this week on what may happen before the semiconductor industry hits the sub-atomic wall.

There were seven conferences within the symposium, on specific subjects, along with a day of classes, an interactive poster session, and a two-day exhibition.

The Alternative Lithographic Technologies conference was heavy on directed self-assembly and nanoimprint lithography papers, while also offering glimpses at patterning with tilted ion implantation and multiphoton laser ablation lithography.

“Patterning is the battleground,” said David Fried, Coventor’s chief technology officer, semiconductor, in an interview at the SPIE conference. He described directed self-assembly as “an enabler for optical lithography.”

Mattan Kamon of Coventor presented a paper on Wednesday afternoon on “Virtual fabrication using directed self-assembly for process optimization in a 14nm DRAM node.”

DSA could be used in conjunction with SAQP or LELELELE, according to Fried. While some lithography experts remain leery or skeptical about using DSA in high-volume manufacturing, the Coventor CTO is a proponent of the technology’s potential.

“Unit process models in DSA are not far-fetched,” he said. “I think they’re pretty close. The challenges of EUV are well understood. DSA challenges are a little less clear. There’s no ‘one solution fits all’ with DSA.” Fried added, “There are places where DSA can still win.”

Franklin Kalk, executive vice president of technology for Toppan Photomasks, is open to the idea of DSA and imprint lithography joining EUV and immersion in the lithography mix. “It will be some combination,” he said in an interview, while adding, “It’s a dog’s breakfast of technologies. Don’t ever count anything out.”

Self-aligning quadruple patterning, for example, was once considered “insanity” in the industry, yet it is a proven production technology now, he said.

While EUV technology is “very focused on one company,” ASML Holding, there is a consensus at SPIE that EUV’s moment is at hand, Wise said. Intel’s endorsement of the technology and dedication to advancing it speaks volumes of EUV’s potential, he asserted.

“Lam’s always excelled in lot-to-lot control,” an area of significant concern, Wise said, especially with all of this week’s talk about process variability.

What will be the final verdict on the future of lithography technology? Stay tuned.

Semiconductor manufacturing and design is growing increasingly complicated and just plain hard. Everyone knows that. The bad news is it’s only going to get worse.

Relax, there are many smart people gathered in San Jose, Calif., this week for the SPIE Advanced Lithography Symposium to discuss the challenges and figure out how to surmount them.

The changes required in lithography and related technologies to continue IC scaling promise to be painful and costly. Mitigating the pain and the cost is a common theme at the SPIE conference.

The annual SPIE Advanced Lithography conference is often dominated by discussions on the state of extreme-ultraviolet lithography (EUVL). In presentations on Sunday and Monday, the theme was generally the same as 2015 – EUV is making progress, yet it’s still not ready for high-volume semiconductor manufacturing.

Intel Fellow Mark Phillips said the technology has seen “two years of solid progress,” speaking Sunday at Nikon’s LithoVision 2016 event. He added, “There’s no change in Intel’s position: We’ll use EUV only when it’s ready.”

Anthony Yen of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing covered the 30-year history of EUV development in his Monday morning presentation at the SPIE conference. Asked during the question-and-answer session following the presentation on when the world’s largest silicon foundry will use EUV, Yen stuck to the official company line of implementing EUV in production for the 7-nanometer process node, after some involvement at 10nm.

Seong-Sam Kim of Samsung Electronics also sees EUV realizing its long-aborning potential at 7nm, a node at which “argon fluoride multipatterning will hit the wall.” He touted the 80-watt power source Samsung has achieved with its NXE-3300 scanner from ASML Holding, saying it had maintained that level over more than eight months.

Intel’s Britt Turkot reported 200W source power “has been achieved recently,” and said the tin droplet generator in its ASML scanner has been significantly improved, increasing its typical lifetime by three times. EUV has demonstrated “solid progress,” she said, including ASML’s development of a membrane pellicle for EUV reticles.

While work with the ASML scanner on Intel’s 14nm pilot fab line has been “encouraging,” Turkot said, she added, “We do need to keep the momentum going.” Intel sees EUV entering into volume production with 7nm chips, according to Turkot. “It will be used when it’s ready,” she said.

EUV technology has shown “good progress” in productivity, while its availability and cost considerations have “a long way to go,” Turkot concluded, adding, “We need an actinic solution for the long term.”

An industry consensus has emerged that EUV will be used with ArF 193i immersion lithography in the near future, and this trend is likely to continue for some time, according to executives at the SPIE conference. There may also be wider adoption of directed self-assembly (DSA) and nanoimprint lithography technology, among other alternative lithography technologies.

Mark Phillips of Intel pointed to complementary implementation of EUV and 193i. “We must use EUV carefully,” he said. “We need to replace three-plus 193i masks.” Phillips added, “EUV can’t be applied everywhere affordably. 193i will continue to be used whenever possible.”

Nikon executives touted the capabilities of their new NSR-S631E ArF immersion scanner, introduced just before the SPIE conference. The new scanner can turn out 250 wafers per hour, and can be pushed to 270 wph with certain options, according to Nikon’s Ryoichi Kawaguchi.

Yuichi Shibazaki of Nikon said the company will next year introduce the S63xE scanner, improving on S631E.

For all the challenges of transitioning to 7nm and beyond, executives at SPIE remain optimistic about solving the issues of 193i multipatterning, DSA, and EUV. Harry Levinson of GlobalFoundries said in response to a question, “The ultimate resource is the human mind.”

EV Group and Brisbane Materials Technology introduced a new anti-reflective (AR) coating solution based on BMT’s innovative XeroCoat materials. The jointly developed manufacturing solution enables lumen output increases of up to eight percent. The AR coating manufacturing solution can be seamlessly integrated with established production schemes, allowing the coating of LED components at room temperature and atmospheric pressure.

International Rectifier, IR, announced that the company has commenced initial production at its new ultra-thin wafer processing facility in Singapore (IRSG). Wafer thinning, metallization, testing and additional proprietary wafer level processing are undertaken at the new 60,000 square foot manufacturing site which receives processed wafers from IR’s internal fabs and foundry partners. The facility, which will employ approximately 135 people in the initial phase, will process a variety of products, including the company’s latest generation power MOSFETs and IGBTs.

PLACYD, an EU funded consortium of industrial and academic collaborators and led by Arkema will establish a dedicated material manufacturing facility that allows the production of block copolymers meeting the rigorous standards required for their use in industry as nanolithographic templates. PLACYD brings together researchers and industries to allow for the first time the integration of synthesis through to wafer scale production and system/device characterization. Partners include: CEA-Leti, STMicroelectronics, Intel IPLS, Mentor Graphics, ASML and other leading EU companies and research organizations.

JILA physicists used an ultrafast laser and help from German theorists to discover a new semiconductor quasiparticle—a handful of smaller particles that briefly condense into a liquid-like droplet. Quasiparticles are composites of smaller particles that can be created inside solid materials and act together in a predictable way. A simple example is the exciton, a pairing, due to electrostatic forces, of an electron and a so-called “hole,” a place in the material’s energy structure where an electron could be, but isn’t.

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